I’ve looked over the site using FireBug and see the problem. It’s not that the images take forever to load, they’re not even called in the HTML output and the background preloading circle is simply a background image (therefore unconnected to whether images are actually being loaded or not).

I note that there are changes from the “out the box” original version of the theme, somewhere in your modifications you have removed / adjusted the code which calls the images and broken the functionality. Please check the files you have modified and if necessary start with a fresh copy and make your modifications again.

3.1 has an issue with the jquery version…I suspect it is the same bug as the photo gallery being broken. Look for the other threads where Dude posted a snip of code to add to the functions.php file to fix the error until they upgrade the theme download.

We are experiencing the exact same issue. The images will not load into the slider; nor does the “Post Thumbnail” box appear. It is quite frustrating since we followed the installation steps exactly. We likewise inserted the code listed above in the “functions.php” file. No effect. Hopefully this post will result in some advice from support.

We purchased the newscast theme on: Order date: 25 Mar 11. The post before ours was the request made for admin information. We can certainly send you our if you like, but we don’t want to jump ahead of the other post.

Unfortunately we had to disable the accordion effect in the slider since it failed to work. The reason we purchased this style was to support our sponsors. We were hoping to see some resolution to this. As stated, we downloaded the Newscast March 25, 2011. I believe we are working with the latest version.

We just download the theme today (March 31) and reloaded it over our March 25 version.

The accordion effect in the slider will not load the images. The “Post Thumbnail” box DOES NOT show up. These are two key functions for our purchasing this theme. We are moving forward with the BLOG, but it certainly looks “blah” without these functions.

When I first activated Newscast the Featured Thumbnail (and additional post thumbnail option panel) did not show. The reason for this is in Screen Option. You need to press the tab (top right of you WP Admin window) and tick Featured Thumbnail.

However, this doesn’t address the other issue lujandesign has pointed out: The images are not called into the theme from a third party gallery plugin. You can only use the not-very-good built in WP Media Library.

If we could have some enlightenment as to how to make other images work, that would be great.

i’m having exactly the same issue. I just downloaded this template yesterday (sat April 9) and haven’t modified anything. I’m using WP 3.1.1. The images won’t show up neither in accordion nor in the other styles. Help greatly appreciated!